


Sacrilege: Redux

by MsDamia



Series: Music for the Soul(mate) [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, BAMF Natasha, Boys can be dumb, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Happy(ish) ending, M/M, No One Dies This Time, Protective Jane, Smut, Soulmates, girls can be dumb too, kidnapped darcy trope, non-con elements (nothing graphic), this might make you cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:30:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21691447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsDamia/pseuds/MsDamia
Summary: When you start dating a great guy only to discover that your soulmate is his former love and suddenly everything is messed up and you are kind of left out in the cold, how the hell are you supposed to deal?Or the one where Bucky and Steve have an epic romance and Darcy doesn't quite fit in like the universe is claiming she should.This is an alternate ending, with some changes in choices made throughout the story, showing what else could have happened to these people in these circumstances.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Jane Foster/Thor, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Music for the Soul(mate) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/172340
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	Sacrilege: Redux

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sacrilege](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715802) by [MsDamia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsDamia/pseuds/MsDamia), [tiziano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiziano/pseuds/tiziano). 



> As stated in the summary, this is an alternate ending version of Sacrilege with some changes in choices made throughout the story, showing what else could have happened to these people in these circumstances. There are minimal edits to this first installment, but each installment will have more and more changes. Some major, some minor. I hope you all enjoy the ride I plan to take you on.

Darcy dropped down as the window above her exploded in a spray of glass shards, dropping her tray to cover her head. She didn’t scream; not because she wasn’t scared, but because this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Not even the fifth at this point. She was so over this aspect of having a soulmate. She stayed still for a few moments longer, waiting for any other noises to erupt before taking a fortifying breath and popping up on her toes, keeping her head below the window frame for a moment before lifting her eyes.

There was Steve. There was Tony. There was James. There was Clint. Where was … there was Sam. All the boys accounted for. They looked surprised but mostly calm. James was clutching Steve’s shoulders, his head down and but his face tilted up to the other man. Steve’s hands fluttered like he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing with them. Clint was helping Sam up from where he was lying against the wall, both of them shaking their heads. Tony’s full attention was on the tablet in his hands. They looked … well, not fine, but safe. Not surprised. She stood up fully and took another deep breath, watching them all silently for a moment before turning and walking away, paper cups and spilled coffee mingling with the glass all over the floor.

The brunette hit the button for the elevator. At the ding she walked on, turned, pressed the button for her floor without taking her eyes off the hallway, and watched as Sam turn into the hall. She shook her head when he opened his mouth, but the metal doors had closed and she didn’t know what she was even shaking her head about. The antics of the boys? The annoyance of her coffee (and everyone else’s) spilling? The glass in her hair? That she couldn’t be a bigger part of whatever was going despite her life being intrinsically wrapped into it? That she couldn’t make herself walk away from any of it? 

The elevator stopped at her floor and she wandered down to her room, the door painted a bright, cheerful red and quite capable of being used as a whiteboard. Communication was always important, no matter the emotional instability that might be pervading your life. Darcy grabbed a black marker and scrawled. “Unavailable” across the door in large, bold letters. She didn’t know what she was feeling right now. Resigned? Tired? Sad? Angry? It felt like her entire being was a question mark these days.

She kicked off her shoes just inside her door and stripped as she walked through the living room, leaving the clothes where they fell. She was silent as she turned on the water in the bathroom, not even glancing in the mirror as she tossed her glasses on the counter. She stepped under the water, her apartment completely silent except for the sound of the shower. Perhaps that could have been a warning to anyone that had been paying attention. Silence around Darcy Lewis. Quiet when she was usually ensconced in a bubble of light and noise.  
She cut her fingers trying to get all of the little bits of glass out of her hair, pausing part way through to stare at the red rinsing from her fingers. Darcy shook her head focusing instead on finishing her hair and then stepping out of the shower. She’d have to remember to make sure that whatever else happened, the window replacements needed to be safety glass. Still, the red reminded her that, though she might feel empty, she was still alive. 

Twenty minutes later found Darcy carefully putting bandaids on her fingers, having already taken care of the knicks on her face and neck. She was a bleeder, unfortunately, and bruised easily. It came part and parcel with the insanely fair skin. She always looked like she’d been through worse than whatever had actually happened. Thankfully she always had a small jar of vaseline on her, a trick she’d learned while dating a wrestler, and that at least helped clot cuts.

Someone knocked gently on her door and Darcy considered for a moment before deciding to answer it. She walked over, opened the door, and raised an expectant eyebrow at the tall man in front of her. After staring at one another silently for a few moments past a comfortable silence, she turned and walked back to the couch, the open door invitation enough for Steve to follow her. He started picking up the band aid wrappers instead of sitting down and she rested a hand on his.

“Don’t.” He stilled at the word and slowly backed up, looking around for a moment before sitting on the chair to the left of her like he hadn’t been there so many times before.

“I’m sorry,” He started. She didn’t let him continue.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Steve.” She informed him, voice sounding tired as she sighed.

“But I feel like I do.” He told her, looking so pained that her face crumpled for a moment.

“We were friends before we were ever anything more.” She reminded him, taking a deep breath to keep away the tears.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t love you.” Steve told her, his voice quiet, pleading. Those words told her more than anything else that things were over. She’d known she shouldn’t fall in love. She had known things wouldn’t work. The words printed low across her pelvis had told her that, one day, everything would implode. ”I will bring you nothing but pain,” a promise of a dark future.

“I know you do, I think that’s why it hurts.” She told him, her chin wobbling again. She got control of herself again, wondering how long that control would last.

“Darcy, please.” She didn’t know what he wanted from her. They were in love, but it wasn’t enough, because the man she was in love with was in love with her soulmate, and had been for most of his life. Where the hell would she ever fit into that equation? 

“Steve.” It was a desperate whisper as the first tear fell from her eye. He stood up and she raised a bandaged hand to stop him. His eyes jumped from band aid to band aid. Sam had no doubt told him she’d been there, had seen the damage caused as Tony tried to work with the arm. The low grade EMP they had only half expected. She’d been there too, had told them she felt useless and gone to get the coffee, the only thing, it seemed, she was ever going to be good for. Had come back just in time to watch everything go insane, as usual. Had seen that desperate look on Bucky’s face as he peered up at Steve through the curtain of his hair. Had seen that look of focused determination on Steve’s. 

“I do love you,” he told her. Another tear fell. He really did love her, she knew that. He just didn’t love her as much as he loved Bucky, her soulmate. The man who didn’t like to look at her. The man who was in love with her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. She could do the math on this equation. No matter how you stacked it she was left on the outside. Alone.

“I love you too.” She promised, trying to smile through her tears but failing. “But you need to go now. Go see James, he needs you.” He froze, standing before her with that look of anguish on his face before he turned and left, shutting the door softly behind him. He would always leave her for James. It hurt her heart for more than she’d ever thought possible, but it was a truth she’d had to accept. 

Darcy’s hand dropped back down to the couch and she cried herself out. Maybe one day they would have some kind of chance. After the pain had settled into something manageable, something that didn’t make her overdose on self loathing because she dared to be jealous of someone who needed so much help. Someone who was supposed to be hers. What kind of a terrible person was she that she was jealous of her own soulmate? She just kept seeing his fingers, metal and flesh, digging into Steve’s shoulders. That desperate look of hope in his eyes. 

A tiny part of her hated James right now. Not fair since a larger part of him hated himself. And there was Steve, stuck between the two of them. Maybe she hated him too, even though she loved him. Steve, stuck between the selfish woman and the broken man. Steve, the best person she’d ever met. She loved him and she couldn’t even be happy that the love of his life was alive. Later, maybe things would be better. After James was more in control of himself. When he could look at her without the self loathing in his eyes and the obvious wish for her to be a hundred miles away. When he wasn’t staring at Steve like he was the only thing in the world that was good. Right now, though, she needed to just cry and kind of hate herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of you may have read the original story, some may not. What I know is that the fic I wrote back in January of 2016 is still getting comments, even now, which is shocking to me. Some of them are positive, some less so. A lot of people, though, want to know why I killed Darcy. I did it because it needed to happen. Sometimes happy endings don't fit into the narrative. I wanted to save her, but it would have been trite and disappointing. I've been wanting to save her ever since. To save her I needed to start over. Keep that same Darcy, but change other things. Let her have a win. She won't die this time.


End file.
